Career fair a success

Diana Defelice-Pirro found her professional calling at the East Peoria Community High School Career Fair.She decided she wanted to be a court reporter. After all, someone at the fair had explained the ins and outs of the job, and it appealed to her interest in fascinating cases and stories.“I was in a co...

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By Helen ZhaoGateHouse News Service

Pekin Daily Times

By Helen ZhaoGateHouse News Service

Posted Mar. 22, 2013 at 10:51 PM
Updated Mar 22, 2013 at 10:54 PM

By Helen ZhaoGateHouse News Service

Posted Mar. 22, 2013 at 10:51 PM
Updated Mar 22, 2013 at 10:54 PM

EAST PEORIA

Diana Defelice-Pirro found her professional calling at the East Peoria Community High School Career Fair.

She decided she wanted to be a court reporter. After all, someone at the fair had explained the ins and outs of the job, and it appealed to her interest in fascinating cases and stories.

“I was in a completely different direction,” the sophomore said Friday. “I liked performing arts and plays and dancing. Court is the last thing I would have ever expected.”

Many at the career fair were exposed to careers they’d never considered before.

About 50 businesses, educational and training institutions from the Peoria area set up booths in the East Peoria Community High School gym.

One thousand four hundred students in grades eight through 12 poured into the gym hourly to visit with various company representatives and participate in the activities that gave them hands-on exposure to a bevy of career fields available in the Peoria area.

“Up at the hospital (booth), they have a pig’s heart and lung and they’re letting the kids touch and feel that and look at it,” said Lori Laredo, the high school’s director of operations, who arranged the career fair.

“We have a veterinarian here from Lakeview Veterinary Clinic. They have a dog here who’s pregnant and they have a sonography of her and they’re having the kids guess how pregnant she is. We have construction in the back that’s doing a little contest to see how fast kids can run drill guns and do the drills through two-by-fours.”

Luc Joseph imagined many of the businesses might play a role in his potential future plans starting a company involved in commercial real estate development.

“We’re going to be looking to build shopping centers and large corporate buildings, so architects — definitely needed, and I’ve seen a couple architects stationed out there,” the senior said. “Construction companies — I saw Gabbert out there. I stopped to talk to them because I’m going to be working with these types of people. Cat (Caterpillar Inc.) is a big presence out there in the gym. We’re probably going to go through them with the machines to help build these.”

According to Rick Swan, executive director of the East Peoria Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the event, the career fair was brought to youths in order to train the next generation to fulfill the needs of the Peoria-area work force, especially as he says, when 25 percent of the nation’s population made up of baby boomers retires.

The goal, he said, is to make Peoria a better place as a whole.

Page 2 of 2 - “If you don’t have good work force, you don’t have good businesses,” Swan said. “If you don’t have good businesses, people aren’t going to be here for employment, and all your other stores and services — people can’t buy them because people don’t have jobs. It all works together.”